Podcast: The James Altucher Show
Guest: Adam Grant
This is the first time James Altucher has featured here. He is a very funny guy. Notoriously inquisitive, honest and a prolific interrupter. But a very good guy with tonnes of experience in the business world. James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and podcaster. He has founded or cofounded more than 20 companies, including Reset Inc. and StockPickr and says he failed at 17 of them.
This week I tuned in to his interview with Adam Grant, a super smart author and a professor. Adam works at Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). Adam is recognized as both the youngest tenured and most highly rated professor at the Wharton School. He is also author of Give and Take. Which highlights what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common. And Originals which is about how to champion new ideas and recognize a good idea using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment. Adam explores how to speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent.
How to be more creative:
1. Get more comfortable with questioning your default assumptions. Instead of saying 'what is this?' say 'what could this be?'. Questioning is a muscle - use it. Bob Sutton + Geoff Heffer from Stanford 'Wisdom is acting on the best information you have while doubting what you know'
2. Triple the number of ideas you generate. For every project. Cara White 'Creativity results from putting old things in new combinations or new things in old combinations'
3. Immerse yourself in another domain. Get into enviroments that you are not used to. Steve Jobs said 1982 'creativity comes from not having the same bag of experiences as everyone else'. Adam mentions that great originals / leaders tend NOT to have the deepest level of expertise - they have the broadest.
Check out the full podcast here.